Tag: Chuck Schumer

Democrats Try to Undermine a Trump Acquittal

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As the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump comes to a close, Democrat resistors are having a hard time coming to grips with an impending acquittal.

Perturbed members of the opposition party have now chosen to engage in a smear campaign that characterizes the Senate proceedings as illegitimate.

Using a worn-out playbook from past attacks, some of the more spiteful Dems are trying to massage the minds of a would-be unsuspecting public that the acquittal of President Trump somehow lacks legitimacy because of a supposed deficiency of witnesses or documents.

In an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO show on January 17, 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the following: “You are impeached forever,” punctuating her comment with the line, “No matter what the Senate does, it [impeachment] can never be erased.”

On January 30, 2020, the day before the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional witnesses or documents, Pelosi said to a reporter, “You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that.”

The very next morning, which was also prior to the pivotal Senate vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The president’s acquittal will be meaningless, because it will be the result of a sham trial. If there are no witnesses, no documents in this trial, there will be a permanent asterisk next to the acquittal of President Trump written in permanent ink.”

Other Democrats joined in with the spin, as did most of their willing media accomplices.

Many will recall when the Democrats flooded the media with a similar set of talking points at the conclusion of the confirmation process for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Some of the more spiteful Dems contended that the process would be unfair and tainted if there was not a delay for an FBI investigation.

After the president and the GOP relented to a week-long FBI investigation, certain Democrat office-holders ran to the microphones to assert that the investigation was insufficient and the confirmation process flawed.

Once again, it really would not have mattered how the GOP senators had proceeded with the impeachment trial. If the trial did not match the outcome that the removal-oriented Democrats wanted, they would have followed up with a coordinated negative message anyway.

The Constitution grants the Senate the sole power to try all impeachments. The Speaker of the House has no real role in an impeachment trial. However, as Pelosi did when she conditioned the delivery of the Articles of Impeachment, the House speaker is attempting to exercise influence and exert control over the Senate impeachment function.

In stark contrast to the way in which the House hearings unfolded, the Senate conducted the impeachment trial process in a fair and dignified manner. While carrying out its constitutional duty, the Senate received and considered a record produced by the House of Representatives. Seventeen of the 18 witnesses from whom the House obtained testimony had their transcripts released. Noticeably absent was the transcript of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who gave testimony that is widely believed would have been helpful to the president’s case.

During the Senate trial, members of the Senate, acting as a jury, listened to more than 190 portions of testimony from 13 of the House witnesses, and additionally had access to almost 29,000 documents.

It was the House Democrats who made the decision to disallow any witnesses that would support the president’s case. It was also the House Democrats who chose not to subpoena other witnesses, because they apparently did not wish to take the time to allow the judicial branch to do its job; that is, the job of dealing with the important constitutional issue of executive privilege.

Some of the more spiteful Dems seem to enjoy projecting the image of wrapping themselves in the Constitution, while they slice it to ribbons with deceitful words and duplicitous conduct.

Chuck Schumer and Democrat Allies Use Jimmy Kimmel as a Political Pawn

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After late-night host Jimmy Kimmel used the opportunity of his show to launch a series of attacks on the latest Senate version of the GOP’s health care legislation, many folks were wondering how it was that Kimmel had become such an authority on health care in general, and on the Graham-Cassidy bill in particular.

It turns out that the co-writer of Kimmel’s health care remarks was none other than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

According to The Daily Beast, for months Kimmel and Schumer had been coordinating behind the scenes to put a wrench in the Republican undertaking of repealing the failing health care system known as Obamacare. Schumer had apparently given Kimmel “technical guidance and info about the bill, as well as stats from various think tanks and experts.”

Kimmel’s spokesman Lewis Kay confirmed to CNN that the late-night host had consulted with Schumer and other groups opposed to the bill. As Graham-Cassidy began to look as though it may have a chance at passage, the partisan New York senator was evidently the one who encouraged Kimmel to use his show as a platform to critique the legislation.

Kimmel’s son had already had to battle congenital heart disease in his infant life. The Democrats apparently saw the opportunity to exploit Kimmel’s family difficulties, using the hardship as a means to attack the Republican proposed legislation by feeding lies to the late-night host. Particularly underhanded was the reframing of the efforts by the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare as a plan that would fail to protect people with pre-existing conditions such as the one Kimmel’s son experienced.

In an on-air monologue, Kimmel demeaned the legislation for failing to meet the so-called “Jimmy Kimmel test,” a term that Cassidy had used inadvisably as a measure of acceptable health care legislation.

Kimmel seemed more than willing to engage in some Hollywood style virtue signaling while simultaneously relishing the opportunity to disrespect President Trump. He even targeted by name Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade for calling out the banality of Kimmel’s analysis. Kilmeade had referred to Kimmel as a member of the Hollywood elite, a designation of the late-night host with which few could disagree.

Lost in the media coverage has been the truth that people with pre-existing conditions would not be denied coverage under the GOP’s proposed legislation. However, it appears as though Kimmel was fed purposely misleading information from Schumer and dutifully repeated the lines for his audience.

The influence of Kimmel on the press and social media seems to have accomplished the goal of tainting the image of Graham-Cassidy, which consequently created an opening for the Republican Party non-loyalist, Senator John McCain, to once again attempt to kill the bill.

The late-night host dedicated a series of monologues to emotion-packed health care sermonizing.

Rather than engaging in serious debate, Kimmel put out falsehoods and half-truths, which went wholly unchallenged by the mainstream media.

Democrats took advantage of Kimmel’s health care segments, using them as fodder for advertising and social media posts in an effort to leverage the late-night host’s influence with a sizable segment of the public.

Kimmel became the star of the Democrat political grandstanding sideshow. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) launched a digital advertising campaign that was framed around the “Jimmy Kimmel test” meme. The ads targeted Republican candidates in crucial midterm election states.

As part of a six-figure digital campaign in 12 states, ads appeared in searches by those trying to get information on “health care,” “repeal,” “the Jimmy Kimmel test,” and other topics, redirecting individuals who clicked on the terms to the DSCC’s already existing health care page.

The targeted states were those that were perceived to have the closest upcoming Senate races in 2018: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Democrats also took advantage of the Kimmel coverage by posting comments on social media. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted a video of one of the Kimmel monologues along with a thank you note.

“Stories like yours are why we will defeat #Trumpcare,” Pelosi wrote.

Other high-profile Democrats who took to Twitter in an effort to make the most of the Kimmel criticism of GOP health care legislation included Schumer, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome.

The truth of the matter is that while out boisterously attacking the pending GOP legislation, Kimmel deceptively kept quiet about the fact that one of the highest profile partisan Democrats was supplying him with his politically poisonous script.

It is more than unfortunate that a television personality on a major broadcast network would allow himself to be used as a pawn on a political chessboard.